The scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service – do we call it IRS-gate? – fundamentally harms the covenant between free people and their government.

While the full scope of the scandal is not yet known, the constantly unfolding events have legitimized voices and criticisms that were largely marginalized as belonging to kooks and conspiracy theorists.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the black helicopters are coming or your local government has a hotline to the United Nations, but it does give confirmation to a small, but vocal, faction of the citizenry that is militantly anti-government.

Until now, nobody credible actually thought an agency of the federal government was acting in a concerted manner to undermine the political process by subjecting everyday citizens to unlawful scrutiny and harassment.

The IRS scandal also exposes the trust deficit – only 12 percent of Michiganders trust the federal government, according to Bridge Magazine – as one of the most serious problems facing our republic and our very system of governance, which rests upon the principle of equality under the law.

The outrage from President Barack Obama’s partisan opponents isn’t surprising, as most of these voices will cry scandal with anything remotely resembling a controversy. At the same time, the outrage of congressional Democrats is smart politics because what the IRS did is indefensible.

Thus, the Democrats are, at least to a degree, portraying themselves as sensible voices and not partisan hacks looking for yet another opportunity to slam the president and re-hash last year’s election.

There is no evidence Obama or anyone holding a senior position in his administration had prior knowledge or direct involvement in the IRS’s actions.

That isn’t to say further investigation will not reveal a White House connection, but using what happened to settle a partisan score is as bad as what the IRS apparatchiks did to political opponents of the administration.

It may be easy to say the Obama administration abused its authority by unlawfully targeting political opponents, but Republicans must move beyond winning the war of words. The GOP must focus on the facts and nothing but the facts.

If this leads congressional investigations to the president, then so be it.

At the same time, one of the good things surely to come out of this will be a renewed consensus amongst the American people to downsize the big and all-powerful federal government.

If the IRS was a private company it would have certainly collapsed under the weight of such a damning scandal.

Sure, there will be a purge of the agency’s leadership, but that is hardly enough to put an end to the crisis.

The IRS only has the incredible power it does because of the sheer size and scale of federal tax law, which is beyond complicated and convoluted.

With both parties expressing outrage at what happened, this is a major opportunity for the advocates of reform.

This might just be one of those rare times in Washington when both Democrats and Republicans agree on the need for radical reform of government, starting with taxes.